Daniel Teran has finally finished the new cover for Vesuvius Plot. Here it is.

Pliny the Elder battles the Germans in Trier only to have the tribes follow him back to Italy. Who will win as the Vesuvius Volcano starts to erupt in the background?

Who was Pliny the Elder?

Pliny the Elder, or Gaius Plinius Secundus, was an ancient Roman scientist, essayist, and thinker, probably the greatest mind of the first century AD. He had an office right next door to what later became the Porta Nigra in Trier.

What was he doing there, hundreds of miles away from his home in Rome? Trier was the oldest Roman city in Germany. He had been appointed Governor of the Province of Germany probably by the Emperor Vespasian and his son, the Emperor Titus. No doubt he studied the birds there as well as the flora and fauna since he was the first to write an encyclopedia called the Natural History, which was influential for centuries.

He was carrying on business as usual here early in the summer of 79 AD before packing his bags and returning home for a summer at the seaside south of Rome at one of his villas near the Vesuvius Volcano which unknown to any mortal that summer was about to erupt.

According to legend that is how Pliny died. He was leading an expedition to save those too near the volcano when the volcano sent a rain of ash down upon him. Italian archaeologist now think they may have discovered his remains in a ship in the Bay of Naples near the volcano. See article on the website.

But the novel offers a different explanation for his mysterious disappearance. He was being pursued by German warriors for writing a derisive work about their peoples and culture called the Germania.

But did he escape or not? Vesuvius Plot may present surprising answers. It is the latest book in the Edward Ware Thrillers at War Series.

Egyptian Spy has recently received some interesting reviews on Goodreads following the Goodreads Giveway for the historical thriller:

Melinda M on Goodreads: Egyptian Spy by Dora Benley is a mystery set in Egypt during the 1930’s between the two wars. It is also set during the Christmas Holiday which makes it very interesting. It is a little difficult at times to follow but the basic story is good. I like the time period and Egypt so it was interesting to me.

Miriam on Goodreads: I received a copy of his novel from a Goodreads Giveaway and I’m glad that I was selected. This novel is riveting and filled with action and suspense. It’s too bad that Lord Ware is such a schlock even if he’s described as handsome.

Dora Benley has authored the 12th volume of the Edward Ware Thrillers at War Series, and they are still coming adding more volumes. In the future look for more adventures including upcoming Murder at Hamlet’s Castle. Edward and Dora are always looking for places to conceal the much sought after Lawrence maps. They have hidden them everywhere from the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum, to the floorboards beneath the bedroom at Edward’s estate in the south of England, to Dora’s bedroom in Oakhurst outside Pittsburgh during the First World War, to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the Rose Tree Museum in Tombstone, Arizona, at Winston Churchill’s estate, Chartwell in Kent, in the tent at Petra in the Syrian desert while fighting with Lawrence of Arabia, and up Edward’s sleeve everywhere he goes as a Colonel in His Majesty’s Armed Forces.

Why shouldn’t the much fabled maps be associated with Hamlet? Apparently in the bowels of Kronburg Castle in Helsingor, or Elsinore in the play, the Danish Prince constructed a vast storage area where he was storing military supply equipment and secret plans and maps for conquering the enemy named Fortinbras whom his father, the previous king of Denmark, was trying to defeat. The castle fell into ruins and very few people remembered the secret chamber. Winston Churchill chanced upon information about it in his researches to European history, and of course Hamlet was a real prince and not just the fictional creation of Shakespeare’s imagination.

So Dora and Edward decide to hide the Lawrence maps there thinking that no one will find them. But that was in the 1930’s. What happens when the Nazi overrun Denmark? Dora and Edward had better get those maps out of there quickly or there will be hell to pay for all of Europe and the civilized world. To be or not to be? They won’t get the chance when Hitler invades. They just won’t be and neither will Denmark.

Throughout the Edward Ware Thrillers at War Series we have various femme fatales who appear in each of the novels. In Vesuvius Plot we meet the femme fatale named Belona who appears to be the queen of the ancient German tribe. In the previous Roman novel, the Cherusci Plot, we met a femme fatale named Terentula who was married to the Roman governor of Trier at the time of 9 A.D and who turned traitor to the Emperor Augustus. In each case, Belona and Terentula take advantage of the men to betray them and betray their causes.

The femme fatale theme is big in the Edward Ware Thrillers at War Series. In the more contemporary port of the series the hero, Col. Sir Edward Ware, has a lifelong antipathy towards the villainess and the femme fatale, Helga von Wessel. At the same time he is the father of her only son, Leopold, and she exercises a fatal attraction of the flesh which Edward must always struggle against. He tries to be true to his wife, Dora, Lady Ware, also his fellow conspirator. He must also resist the femme fatale’s attempts to steal the Lawrence maps, key to world domination.

In the series femme fatales become part of the theme itself. They are the touchstones which the hero must struggle against discover his role, his identity, and to achieve his eventual triumph. They embody villainy itself in a very personal way.

But at the end of the series where do all these evil women go? None of them actually seems to get killed or die in the book. Even Helga von Wessel only disappears. Belona seems to be magical, almost a goddess or evil goddess in herself. Terentula is the head of the defiant political movement that will not go away will give Rome trouble in the future. I’d like to think of all three of them as someday meeting in a dark corner of the earth, or perhaps the dark side of the moon, or perhaps some lost Potemkin village in the wilds of Russia where no one else will ever find them. They can set up their own city with their own laws where all these women are in charge. They can exploit the men only in some dark fantasy but not in real life.

Vesuvius Plot is dedicated to the mountain that never sleeps, Mount Vesuvius, still active after 2000 years.

The author visited Pompeii in the Amalfi Coast on her second trip to Rome she was 15 years old. She took a one day tour from the eternal city down the coast to the most famous archaeological ruin that exists anywhere. She was anxious to take notes and photographs for her Latin one class back at the high school.

She followed closely behind the guide all the way through the town, looking from left to right at all the ruined houses and artworks and taking copious notes. The guide would not allow her, her mother, or her sister to visit the art gallery devoted to nude statues and other controversial artwork. He would allow only her brother, even though he was younger, and her father to take the tour. Later she was able to view the artworks in various coffee table books that showed the reader the statues and paintings that now reside mostly in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. She was able to view Mount Vesuvius in the distance alongside of the Bay of Naples. That volcano probably made a bigger impression than anything else. It was easy to imagine even for a 15-year-old what it must’ve been like that day at noon time on August 24 79 A.D. When the volcano erupted. Up until now the author has never dealt with that event in any of her novels. She thought it was fitting that it become the subject the novel of its own entitled the Vesuvius Plot.

Here we follow the adventures of the grandson of the hero of the Cherusci Plot as he joins the administration of Pliny the Elder at Trier where the government then resided in the province of Germany. The ancestors of Arminius, Hermann the German, are still trying to resist Roman rule. In particular they are targeting Pliny the Elder because of his work entitled the Germania, which has since been lost. The governor, a famous scientist and philosopher and author of the encyclopedic natural history, the first encyclopedia ever written, criticized the Germans for being barbaric and outside the Roman world. This was an accusation that the descendants of Hermann the German were not likely to forget or forgive.

They follow Pliny the Elder and Caius Antonius back to Italy during the summer of 79 A.D. While the volcano blows its top they try to decide who will rule the Western world – will it be the Romans or will it be the Germans, under the sign of the swastika, symbol of their ancient religion, after all?

Daniel Teran’s two most recent book covers include Vesuvius Plot and Carthage Must Be Destroyed.
In Vesuvius Plot Pliny the Elder battles the Germans in Trier only to have the tribes follow him back to Italy. Who will win as the Vesuvius Volcano starts to erupt in the background?

Who was Pliny the Elder?

Pliny the Elder, or Gaius Plinius Secundus, was an ancient Roman scientist, essayist, and thinker, probably the greatest mind of the first century AD. He had an office right next door to what later became the Porta Nigra in Trier.

What was he doing there, hundreds of miles away from his home in Rome? Trier was the oldest Roman city in Germany. He had been appointed Governor of the Province of Germany probably by the Emperor Vespasian and his son, the Emperor Titus. No doubt he studied the birds there as well as the flora and fauna since he was the first to write an encyclopedia called the Natural History, which was influential for centuries.

He was carrying on business as usual here early in the summer of 79AD before packing his bags and returning home for a summer at the seaside south of Rome at one of his villas near the Vesuvius Volcano which unknown to any mortal that summer was about to erupt.

According to legend that is how Pliny died. He was leading an expedition to save those too near the volcano when the volcano sent a rain of ash down upon him. Italian archaeologist now think they may have discovered his remains in a ship in the Bay of Naples near the volcano. See article on the website.

But the novel offers a different explanation for his mysterious disappearance. He was being pursued by German warriors for writing a derisive work about their peoples and culture called the Germania.
But did he escape or not? Vesuvius Plot may present surprising answers. It is the latest book in the Edward Ware Thrillers at War Series.

In Carthage Must Be Destroyed Gaius Antonius is inspired by the leading senator and statesman, Marcus Porcius Cato. He turns his talent for drawing into a map making expedition to Carthage where he manages to ferret out a naval vessel as evidence that the Carthaginians are starting to rebuild their fleet in the aftermath of the Second Punic War. They have finished with the reparations that Rome imposed on them, and now have money to spare.

He and his mentor Cato return to the Roman Senate to get them to declare war when the map disappears. Gaius must chase the Carthaginian Princess Tanit across the Mediterranean and meet all sorts of unexpected hardships.

Will he make it in time, or will Princess Tanit and her relatives gain the upper hand against them? Find out in Carthage Must Be Destroyed by Dora Benley.

Pliny the Elder, or Gaius Plinius Secundus, was an ancient Roman scientist, essayist, and thinker, probably the greatest mind of the first century AD. He had an office right next door to what later became the Porta Nigra in Trier.

What was he doing there, hundreds of miles away from his home in Rome? Trier was the oldest Roman city in Germany. He had been appointed Governor of the Province of Germany probably by the Emperor Vespasian and his son, the Emperor Titus. No doubt he studied the birds there as well as the flora and fauna since he was the first to write an encyclopedia called the Natural History, which was influential for centuries.

He was carrying on business as usual here early in the summer of 79AD before packing his bags and returning home for a summer at the seaside south of Rome at one of his villas near the Vesuvius Volcano which unknown to any mortal that summer was about to erupt.

According to legend that is how Pliny died. He was leading an expedition to save those too near the volcano when the volcano sent a rain of ash down upon him. Italian archaeologist now think they may have discovered his remains in a ship in the Bay of Naples near the volcano. See article on the website.

But the novel offers a different explanation for his mysterious disappearance. He was being pursued by German warriors for writing a derisive work about their peoples and culture called the Germania.

But did he escape or not? Vesuvius Plot may present surprising answers. It is the latest book in the Edward Ware Thrillers at War Series.

There is still time to enter the Goodreads Giveaway for Egyptian Spy by Dora Benley. Win 1 of 100 free copies of the book.

Dora, Lady Ware, her husband, Colonel Sir Edward Ware, his boss, Wickie, and Wickie’s wife, Jane, all travel to the Sphinx outside Cairo for the Christmas holidays when Edward’s mother, the Dowager Lady Ware, comes to visit in the 1930’s between the wars.

There are mystery figures hanging about even on top of the Sphinx and Dora cannot quite make them out. When she is left alone for a moment, a stalker approaches her and threatens her if she does not hand over the military maps that they want.

She flees and the stalker chases her. She finds herself on top of the Sphinx with a spitting cobra, only to be saved by Leopold, a young man who has befriended her.

But he is suddenly gunned down. But whom? And who is Leopold? Dora had better find out or she could soon be dead, too, in Egyptian Spy, a new thriller by Dora Benley.

Currently the debate for Egyptian Spy is scheduled for Friday, December 7 at 10:15AM MT.

Dora, Lady Ware, her husband, Colonel Sir Edward Ware, his boss, Wickie, and Wickie’s wife, Jane, all travel to the Sphinx outside Cairo for the Christmas holidays when Edward’s mother, the Dowager Lady Ware, comes to visit in the 1930’s between the wars.There are mystery figures hanging about even on top of the Sphinx and Dora cannot quite make them out. When she is left alone for a moment, a stalker approaches her and threatens her if she does not hand over the military maps that they want.

She flees and the stalker chases her. She finds herself on top of the Sphinx with a spitting cobra, only to be saved by Leopold, a young man who has befriended her.

But he is suddenly gunned down. But whom? And who is Leopold? Dora had better find out or she could soon be dead, too, in Egyptian Spy, a new thriller by Dora Benley.

Julia: A Romance was entered in the RITA Contest for best short historical romance. It has entered part 2 of that contest.

Julia has every reason to wish that she had not been born the daughter of a Roman senator during the Roman Civil Wars of Marius and Sulla. Her father, Rufus, is trying to escape the proscription lists and save his life by betrothing his only daughter in marriage to Marcus Sisenna.

Marcus Sisenna is the right hand man of Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, one of the leading men of Rome of the day. Rufus needs his armies and the protection both Sulla and Sisenna can provide.

But Julia does not want to marry a man who has already had five wives and who is just marrying her for her father’s money and estates. She does not want to be added to his collection of trophies. Julia wants personal happiness despite the time period into which she has been born.

Her father thinks only of keeping his wealth and estates together. Her divorced mother is interested only in her own lovers. To whom shall Julia turn for assistance? The answer may surprise you. For it is obviously just the opposite of what the desperate Julia might expect.